The Best Job in the World - And the Most Neglected - Being a Father

Patton Tank Museum, Ft. Knox.
This was our Lincoln and theology and tanks vacation.

The best part about being a father is that expectations are so low. Simply being around is considered a miracle today. Many jobs take fathers away from their families. Clergy can be with their families or abandon them. The ones who desert their children, except for meetings with the parole officer, are the ones who become the great and mighty in their denominations. Ask Kudu Don for tips on that.

In farm and guild days, fathers taught sons - they worked side by side.

LI turned 40 today - at about 1 AM. The event makes me think of many fun episodes.

We debated how to say words when waiting for Mrs. I to shop. "I say yes" was countered with "I say no." People would stop and listen to the boy in the umbroller. "I call it ta" - his word. "No it is soap." Laughter, switching sides. More debates.

At museums later, when we visited every dinosaur shrine we could, people looked us up frantically and said, "How old is your son? Where is he going to school? Do you realize...?" We assured them that we were up to date, that we knew something about higher education.

Reading good literature together at night was great fun. We read Twain, Tolkien, C. S. Lewis, Wind in the Willows, Freddy the Pig,  adventure novels, and many others, with an emphasis on classic works.. Some we read repeatedly - Tokien especially. Later we shared a love for Shakespeare, from separate reading. He had an excellent teacher at MLS for literature.

It has been easy to enjoy so many mutual interests. I wonder why so many fathers bypass the best part of their lives in order to make a few more dollars and impress some superficial people.

I doubt whether many clergy fathers will look back and say, "That was a great council meeting we had 20 years ago." But they remember with advantages the time spent with their children. The more time, the more they will treasure it and reap the rewards. As Henry V said, they will rise up on their tiptoes when they remember the project built together. They will roll up their sleeves and say, "This scar I got when I demonstrated how to build a fire."

Luther has a great comment about unbelievers - that God blinds them to the fruits of the Spirit. They look on the lives of believers and see nothing good. Unbelievers hate, despise, and mock the privations and difficulties of believers - something evidenced in the celebrity-centered synods of apostasy.

St. Crispin’s Day speech

from Henry V (1599) by William Shakespeare

http://poetry.about.com/library/weekly/blshakespearewar.htm

WESTMORELAND. O that we now had here But one ten thousand of those men in England That do no work to-day! KING. What’s he that wishes so? My cousin Westmoreland? No, my fair cousin; If we are mark’d to die, we are enow To do our country loss; and if to live, The fewer men, the greater share of honour. God’s will! I pray thee, wish not one man more. By Jove, I am not covetous for gold, Nor care I who doth feed upon my cost; It yearns me not if men my garments wear; Such outward things dwell not in my desires. But if it be a sin to covet honour, I am the most offending soul alive. No, faith, my coz, wish not a man from England. God’s peace! I would not lose so great an honour As one man more methinks would share from me For the best hope I have. O, do not wish one more! Rather proclaim it, Westmoreland, through my host, That he which hath no stomach to this fight, Let him depart; his passport shall be made, And crowns for convoy put into his purse; We would not die in that man’s company That fears his fellowship to die with us. This day is call’d the feast of Crispian. He that outlives this day, and comes safe home, Will stand a tip-toe when this day is nam’d, And rouse him at the name of Crispian. He that shall live this day, and see old age, Will yearly on the vigil feast his neighbours, And say “To-morrow is Saint Crispian.” Then will he strip his sleeve and show his scars, And say “These wounds I had on Crispian’s day.” Old men forget; yet all shall be forgot, But he’ll remember, with advantages, What feats he did that day. Then shall our names, Familiar in his mouth as household words- Harry the King, Bedford and Exeter, Warwick and Talbot, Salisbury and Gloucester- Be in their flowing cups freshly rememb’red. This story shall the good man teach his son; And Crispin Crispian shall ne’er go by, From this day to the ending of the world, But we in it shall be remembered- We few, we happy few, we band of brothers; For he to-day that sheds his blood with me Shall be my brother; be he ne’er so vile, This day shall gentle his condition; And gentlemen in England now-a-bed Shall think themselves accurs’d they were not here, And hold their manhoods cheap whiles any speaks That fought with us upon Saint Crispin’s day.